In the aerospace industry, aviation fuel is used to power aircraft. The aircraft burns fuel during flight, and in this context, fuel burn refers to the amount of fuel burned for the flight or a segment of the flight. A flight plan often includes and depends on a predicted fuel burn for the flight, and the predicted fuel burn is often determined based on an expected quality of the aviation fuel. In some cases, however, the fuel uplifted to the aircraft for a flight does not have the expected quality. This leads to fuel overburn, which may have a number of undesirable impacts on flight operations and operational costs. In one report, some long range flights frequently over burned 1500-2000 kilograms of aviation fuel, which represents a payload impact of about 20 passengers per flight. Some of these flights were diverted to enroute alternates due to reaching waypoints below minimum fuel requirements, which resulted in an additional operational cost.
The calorific content of aviation fuel is one measure of the quality of the fuel, and it may be expressed as a net calorific value—also known as a lower heating value (LHV). An investigation revealed that the Jet A-1 aviation fuel uplifted to the aircraft at departure stations presented a LHV of around 42.5 megajoules/kilogram (MJ/kg)—below specification for Jet A-1.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a system and method that takes into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as other possible issues.